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Tuesday, September 24, 2013

I’ve been keeping
records of the weather ever since we’ve lived here in Brittany. We’ve had a dry
summer this year but how dry? With just a week before our building permission
expires, we’ve finally broken the ground. Gildas, in his digger, scraped the land
flat so I could mark up the house plan on the land ready to dig and pour
foundations. Neighbour Serge (a builder by trade) came over to have a nose. We
all looked at the hole and the spoil; there was only one word “sec” (dry). It
was bone dry from the surface, all the way down.

Average rain and
the rain that actually falls during the month doesn’t tell the whole story; the
gaps between rain days and how much fell when it rained give a fuller picture.
For example, having a huge downpour with half the monthly rain falling on one
day, then the next two weeks dry doesn’t help much in keeping the roots of
vegetables and pasture from getting all too thirsty. The pattern has been that
our summers, though different, have left the ground dry. In July 2009, we had a
‘wet’ month, with 66mm of rain (nearly double the average of 37) however, I had
noted: “ground dry despite rain.

Last Thursday, I
went to the latest educational meetings of the local CRPF (Centre Régional de la Propriété Forestière). It was a visit to a young experimental
tree plantation looking at how various trees of different species, and
varieties within the same species, will cope with the changing climate, with
the aim of discovering the most resilient trees for the future. This Brittany
plantation is part of a Europe-wide project, looking at the same set of trees in
different countries.

The established
term “global warming” suggests that Britons and Bretons alike, might not need
to fly south for Mediterranean summers. If it was that simple, and agreeable,
we might not have too much to worry about. In fact, it’s better to use “climate
change” and realise that global warming means feeding more energy into weather
systems, so we’ll get stronger weather, with wetter winters, drier summers and
autumns, more floods, strong winds and storms, heat waves and dry spells.

Like the CRPF, it
would be wise to start planning for how we are going to live comfortably in
these new conditions and reliably produce the food and wood (for construction
and energy) that we’ll need. We’re in the process of beginning a gardening
group with three other local couples to see if eight heads are better than two
in trying to find strategies and solutions in a changing climate. We’ll look at
using permaculture principles to see if we can intelligently engineer a way to
use the winter water excess to survive the summer desiccation; we’re talking
swales, mulching, organic matter, water tanks and plants that can better cope
with these new conditions.